"In many ways Industry 4.0 is not new technology; it’s the fact that the price of the technology has lowered and the driving force of the internet and web-based technologies has pushed a level of standardisation which wasn’t previously there.

“Industry 4.0 is not a specific technology or a destination, it is a journey towards a more integrated business operation.

“It will be a combination of different technologies from different companies working together to provide value.”

Brainboxes, which employs 30 people, has thrown its weight behind LCR 4.0, a new business support programme aimed at helping manufacturers in the Liverpool City Region to take advantage of the opportunities associated with Industry 4.0.

Walsh said: “Brainboxes is pursuing a strategy of investing in Industry 4.0 technologies to provide our customers with better solutions.”

He said businesses need to work out how much machine downtime costs them to truly appreciate the potential benefit of Industry 4.0.

“I went to a print company recently who recorded their machine down time,” he recalled. “We totalled up the hours on the graph and saw they had over £1 million in lost productivity due to down time.

“As soon as you can quantify it in that way it makes the internal sales pitch between middle and upper management easy. Spend thousands to save £100,000 etc. If you’re not measuring it then you can’t manage it.

“A key aspect of Industry 4.0 will be preventative, predictive and reactive maintenance. By monitoring machines and analysing the data produced, a maintenance engineer can reduce downtime by predicting when components on a machine need replacing/servicing.

“Brainboxes is embarking on trials with our key customers to create a machine monitoring for preventative maintenance solution.”